Connie Britton

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, which has us thinking about our favorite TV crushes.

For me, Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) of “Friday Night Lights” will always have a place in my heart. As for current shows, well I’ve fallen hard for Zooey Deschanel (“New Girl”) and Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”), but hasn’t everybody?

Here’s a Halloween treat for fans of “American Horror Story”: FX has just announced that it has ordered a second 13-episode season of the spooky haunted-house drama.

“It’s one thing to have the ambition and guts to reinvent a genre in a way that makes it captivatingly fresh for a broad audience—it’s something else entirely to have the craft to back that ambition up,” FX chief John Landgraf said in a press release.

Created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (“Nip/Tuck,” “Glee”), “AHS” is producing robust ratings, growing though its first four weeks in the network’s target audience of Adults 18-49. On a Live+7 basis, through two weeks, first-run episodes of “AHS” are averaging 4.2 million Total Viewers, 2.9 million Adults 18-49, and 1.7 million Adults 18-34. It is currently tracking to become the highest-rated first season of any series ever on FX.

On a Live+3 basis, last week’s fourth episode was the highest-rated episode of the season in delivery of Adults 18-49 (3.1 million) and Adults 18-34 (1.85 million).

Viewers who have yet to see “AHS” have a chance to catch up. Tonight beginning at 10 p.m., FX will air a special Halloween marathon of the show featuring the first four episodes. In this Wednesday’s (Nov. 2, 10 p.m.) fifth episode, “Halloween, Part 2”, Halloween night concludes with Tate (Evan Peters) coming face-to-face with his past, and Ben (Dylan McDermott) and Vivien (Connie Britton) are haunted by one of the house’s newest guests.

“AHS” revolves around the Harmons, a family of three who moved from Boston to Los Angeles as a means to reconcile past anguish. The cast features Dylan McDermott as “Ben Harmon,” a psychiatrist; Connie Britton as “Vivien Harmon,” Ben’s wife; Taissa Farmiga as “Violet,” the Harmon’s teenage daughter; Jessica Lange in her first-ever regular series TV role as “Constance,” the Harmon’s neighbor; Evan Peters plays “Tate Langdon,” one of Ben’s patients; and Denis O’Hare as “Larry Harvey.” Guest stars for the series include Frances Conroy as the Harmon’s housekeeper; Alexandra Breckenridge as the Harmon’s housekeeper; and Jamie Brewer as Constance’s daughter.

My subscription to DirecTV finally pays off in a big way tonight with the Season 3 premiere of “Friday Night Lights.” That’s where the show will air this fall — on Channel 101, a place my remote control has rarely, if ever, taken me.

It’s not the ideal situation, but considering that the alternative would probably have been no “Lights” at all, I’ll gladly take it.

For those in the dark, the highly acclaimed but lowly rated “Lights” was on the proverbial bubble by the end of last season. And it probably would have been a goner had NBC not made an offbeat financing deal with DirecTV to produce a third season that would debut on the satellite station in the fall and then hop back to NBC in January.

Other cost-saving sacrifices were made as well. Some actors were let go and the episode order was cut to 13. What we’re left with is a stripped-down, less populated version of “Lights,” but it’s better than no show at all — and even with one hand tied behind its back, “Lights” still outshines most of television’s prime-time fare.